fractional pagerank

a pagerank theory...

people are always asking about high or low values of pagerank.
like....how can i tell if i am a low pr5 or a high pr5?
i was looking at the google directory...and it occurred to me...
the sites are listed...as google says.....'in pagerank order'.
ok...so how do they determine the order of...say...8 pr5 web sites in a single category?
what if this is done with the fractional pagerank information.
so that the 8 pr5 sites would be ordered 5.85,5.72,5.44,5.31.....and so on.
so therefore you could identity if you were a high pr5 or a low pr5 based on your place among the pr5 sites.
...and...the more pr5 sites in the category...the more accurate the estimate would be.

this is obviously based on a lot of 'what ifs'....
yes...its also possible that google uses other factors to determine the order of sites that have an equal pagerank value.
....and perhaps someone knows some other information that will make this theory immediately 'void'.
but i though i would throw it out there.

footnote:
one of the issues with this observation...even if it is true...is that google does not keep the directory pageranks updated consistently with what the toolbars says. some of the pageranks seem to be almost 2 months old. that kinda kills the usefullness of any fractional pagerank calculating abilities of this idea. perhaps thats the reason why google fails to keep it up-to-date. it does seem kinda odd that google doesnt keep this pagerank info current...after all...they are the ones with the most current info at their fingertips. the only other possibilty is that they want to motivate everyone to install the toolbar to get the freshest pagerank report.

One why I can tell if I have a high or low PageRank for a particular site... Let's say You have a PR7 site, and normally everything one-click deep is PR6, well if you have a "high" PR7, everything one-click in will also be PR7.

- Shawn

i think that may work in a very simplified view of a site.
but there are lots of factors...like the site linking structure...pagerank funneling...external links to pages other than the index...etc...that will throw that statement out of whack fairly quickly.

I know I have a low PR6 and high PR5 for my home page and main sub pages.

Why?

Because for the past year my PR has been at either PR6 or PR5.

I don't spend any time getting links, so I know its pretty constant.

What if you are a low PR 5 site and the other sites in the directory are just lower PR 5 sites than you are but you show up on higher than them? Technically you'd be a high low PR 5 site.

well....thats why i said the accuracy increases with the number of same pr sites in the category. the probability that all of the pr5 sites are low 5 is reduced as the number of pr5 sites increases in quantity. thats how probability works. so if there are 15 pr5 sites...its unlikely that they are all low pr5 sites. most major categories have a sh*tpile of same pr sites.

this helps show the overlaps between the directory and toolbar to figure out pagerank
http://www.searchnerd.com/pagerank/

that 'google is an 11' thing is really interesting.
thanks for the info aaron.

ok, i dont get it. lacking braincells today i guess. still dont see how i can tell where in the range my site falls. for example, take 16, which has a range of 39-49 under it. how would i know where in the 39-49 mine falls. i can see the pos.gif number, but where do i get the other number?

they add in your Google Directory PR
with your Toolbar PR

for example

toolbar 5 + 16 = 45.45 - 49.99
toolbar 4 + 16 = 37.50 - 45.44

the range is a range normalized for 100... it just helps to show the overlaps between the two different messurements to give you a more accurate view of PR...honestly I do not really ever analyze it this fully, but the Google think is interesting...

Can't remember which forum... (sorry)
A link was pointing to a site expalining how the directory page of google code had this answer.
Before the listing, the PR gauge is made of this line:

<img src="/img/pos.gif" width=16, height=4 align=absmiddle border=0 ALT=""><img src="/img/neg.gif" width=24 height=4 align=absmiddle border=0 ALT="">

The width=16 of the pos.gif can be used to determine the high or low PR...
If PR5 is made of width=15-20... a 15 is low and 20 is high...

wow, thanks guys for the explanations. i still don't have a clue whether mine is high or low, but i'll pretend i do. i'll sleep better tonight if i pretend. :-D

illogical...illogical...illogical? :-?

the more i look at the google toolbar graphic and the google directory page rank green bar....the less they make sense.

first of all...i really dont see any magic information in the google directory green bars.
there is no fractional pagerank indications
there are only 9 possible graphical settings.
[in other words there are only 9 gif sizes.]
0 - 5 - 11 - 16 - 22 - 27 - 32 - 38 - 44
so there are no intermediate [fractional] pagerank values to be discovered there.
if there were then they would offer more width values like 17,18,19,20 and so on.

the same goes for the google toolbar graphic.
it shows only fixed widths relating to each pagerank integer.
in other words....all pr6 pages have the same width green bar.

but what really starts to become apparent...however...
....is that these little rank-o-meters make less and less sense the closer you look at them.
take the google directory green bar / gray bar.
[here is a detail shot of the directory green bar:]
http://www.moshbox.com/files/google...ry-pagerank.jpg
it has the following possible widths....
0 - 5 - 11 - 16 - 22 - 27 - 32 - 38 - 44
that makes nine possible readings...a scale of nine.
whats evident about this image is that you would think it shows a pr4...since 16 out of 40 [16/40] = 4.
well it doesnt...this is my site and it has never been a pr4.
this site went straight from a pr3 right to a pr5. [and that was over 6 months ago.]
it has been pr5 for the last 6 months.
at the time of this green bar image...my site was a pr6.
it achieved a pr6 about 2 days ago.
so this 16 pixel green width must either be showing a pr5 or a pr6 depending on how up-to-date the directory is.
either way its monkeyed up.

the bigger issue here is.....
how the heck do you represent 10 levels of pr with nine settings? [0 - 5 - 11 - 16 - 22 - 27 - 32 - 38 - 44]
actually you need 11 levels of pr since google is pr11. [supposedly]
how is that done?
what genius looked at a bar width of 44 and took 11 pagerank possibilities and didnt do the basic math of 44/11?
if this had been done...then each pr level would be 4 pixels wide.
therefore it would follow that....

pr0=0pixels
pr1=4pixels
pr2=8pixels
pr3=12pixels
pr4=16pixels
pr5=20pixels
pr6=24pixels
pr7=28pixels
pr8=32pixels
pr9=36pixels
pr10=40pixels
pr11=44pixels

that i could understand.
but this aint the case.
there are only 9 settings of width.

how do you assign pr0 through pr11 or even pr10 to these possible settings? i cant do it....can you?

i dont think the searchnerd table here makes a very good attempt at reasoning this dilemma.

the google tool bar does not help sort out this madness either...
it only adds more to it.
the google tool bar is 38 pixels wide.
divide 38 by 10 to even pixels? cant do it. not with 11 either.
here is what pr6 and pr9 looks like on the toolbar.
http://www.moshbox.com/files/google...ar-pagerank.jpg
i show a 10 division scale with the thin black lines.
the black and gray dotted line is a pixel scale.
the pr6 [the bottom green bar] is 22 pixels wide. [my site][38x.6=22.8 ...so 23 would actually be more accurate.]
the pr9 [yahoo] [the top green bar] is 34 pixels wide. [38x.p=34.2 very close].
but the point again is that all pr9 sites are 34 pixels wide.
....all pr6 sites are 22 pixels wide.
there is no fractional information here.

so what about combining the directory bar and the toolbar?
like as aaron tries to explain about how the searchnerd process does it:


how do you take two very inaccurate graphical representations of a number and combine them to get a more accurate number....it just doesnt work...its not logical.
your are using inaccurate graphical approximations to begin with.

the logic doesnt work either.
if i am pr5 then the toolbar and directory bar should show pr5 id they are both up to date. i cant have a toolbar 4 with a directory 16 or toolbar 5 with a directory 16 as shown in aarons example above. thats not logical. it could only always be one or the other...because if directory 16 means pr4 then my toolbar should read pr4 and if directory 16 means pr5 then my toolbar should read pr5. there cant be separate occasions when it 'could' be one way or 'could' be the other.


if anyone has a better/different/clearer/simpler way to interpret this mess....i am all eyes and ears. :grin:


.

The site that was talking about this graph and PR...

http://www.searchnerd.com/pagerank/